


The road not taken

by Woozletania



Series: Rocket one-shot AUs [3]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cybernetics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 04:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18909919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woozletania/pseuds/Woozletania
Summary: In one, more familiar reality, Rocket Raccoon escaped from the Halfworld lab on his own, and went on to meet Groot and the Guardians, eventually becoming a hero.In another reality he was rescued, half grown, from the lab.  But not by Nova Corps, or another legitimate organization.  What happens when the people to take Rocket from the lab are the Children of Thanos?





	1. Rescue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madness_on_the_milano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madness_on_the_milano/gifts).



"This is pointless." Corvus Glaive ran the monomolecular edge of his namesake weapon along the row of empty cages, slicing through metal bars and cage walls alike. "Nothing. Father will not be pleased."

"Patience," advised - or perhaps ordered - Ebony Maw. The leader of the Black Order made a small gesture and an armored door tore loose from its mountings. "I will check the remaining specimen rooms. Find the scientists. I want them alive."

"Of course." Silent as a shadow Corvus was gone, leaving Maw to glide through another operating theater. The smell of animals told him their intel was at least partly correct. This research facility was active, this much was true. Supposedly it possessed the technology to make augmented soldiers. Animal research was the logical precursor to humanoid trials.

There was a distant scream. Presumably Glaive carrying out his duties. Maw was confident his assassin comrade wouldn't kill at random. The Children of Thanos were too disciplined for that.

"Hmmm." The latest specimen room looked promising. Fresh blood on the operating table, open bins of cybernetic components, a helmet and cables for neural feed forced learning. Someone had been worked on here, and recently. Ebony Maw reached out with his psychokinesis, sending out whiskers of mental force to warn him in the event a supersoldier did turn out to be present. Vast though his powers were, he was not indestructible. Caution cost nothing.

He glanced along the row of animal cages with little interest and turned away. Two things convinced him this was a mistake. First, the cybernetics components awaiting implantation were smaller than he expected. Individual small parts were no surprise, but there was nothing large enough to match the length of even a modest sized human's arm bones, much less leg. The linear armature motors that gave a cyborg its strength must match the length of each bone. The largest here would barely fit a human midget.

And there was a brush against one of his feeler tendrils, a soft, stealthy movement. Something was watching him. Something in one of the animal cages.

"Well, hello," he said as he turned. There was a hurried movement behind the bars as some small beast hid itself beneath a ragged blanket. Whatever it was couldn't be any larger than a newborn babe. This must be the planned host for the implants.

"I will not hurt you," he said, though at the same time he raised his telekinetic shields to full strength. A whisker of lesser force reached through the bars and plucked the blanket away.

Fur. Shaved, exposed skin. Stitch marks, protruding bolts. Angry, half healed surgical scars. A little pointed muzzle and frightened eyes, a ringed tail, and a panicked retreat to the farthest corner of the cage.

"No one will hurt you," Maw repeated as he studied the beast. Whatever it once was, it was nearly humanoid now, save for the animalistic head and clawed hands and feet plus, of course, the tail. Scars on its shaved skull showed where implants had gone in. With a pitiful whine it tried to cram itself further into the back corner of the cage, thinking he was here to pull it forth and inflict another in a no doubt lengthy series of painful operations. Its feral eyes showed no intellect. It was small, with the awkward look of the half grown. A child, in an animal sense.

Perhaps it was just that, just an animal. Perhaps their trip here was wasted. Maw was thorough. He brushed feelers of mental force over it, over the interior of the cage. He found something, but before he could investigate a footstep from behind caused him to turn.

"There were six," breathed Proxima Midnight as she entered with Glaive. "One managed to secure a weapon and I had to kill him. There were also two guards." She shrugged. "Amateurs."

Five men in lab coats entered. They were homogeneous of appearance, all from a species he recognized. Terran. Their personal idiosyncrasies of hair and skin color, or eye shape did not disguise their origin.

Maw watched the men line up, flanked by Proxima and Corvus. The fear in their eyes made him smile. Fear bred cooperation.

"Explain your functions," he said. It was a command, not a question.

"I am project director," said the Terran whose name tag read Randolph. Down the row it went. Chang, surgical assistant. Kinkaid, anesthesiologist. Osterman, cyberneticist. Ernst, chief surgeon.

"You are all Terran?"

"Yes," said Randolph. "They wanted to experiment on Earth animals since the Ravagers sold them some. They took us thinking that human doctors would be experts. They didn't realize that we worked on humans. We did our best, but..." he shrugged.

"And you have only one subject?" Maw gestured toward the beady eyes watching from behind the bars. The little beast ducked back under its blanket, shivering.

"Currently," Randolph replied. "A failure, I am afraid. The Uplift did not take. It has yet to pass a single test."

"Hasn't it?" Maw reached out with his mind, testing the anomaly he'd found in the cage. The little beast saw the screws unscrewing from the metal wall plate behind it and grabbed one, trying to keep the plate in place. Gently Maw pushed it aside and pulled the bottom of the plate out until four small objects wedged behind it dropped into view.

"What are these, then?" The bandit-masked beast grabbed at the pills as they floated by, and Maw watched with great interest as it tried to stuff them into its mouth. Just as carefully as before he pulled them from its grip. A moment later they were hovering in front of Director Randolph, four little green pills.

"Painkillers," said Chief Surgeon Ernst, a tall, fat man. "Before you ask, no, we don't leave them in the animal cages. It shouldn't have them at all. We don't use them, we use neural dampers while operating."

"And yet it had four," Maw said. "And tried to eat them when I found them. What would happen if it did?"

"Four is much too strong a dose. It might die if we didn't act quickly. Three it could survive, five -"

"Five would surely kill it," Maw said with certainly. "No, I do not know your medicines, but I see its reasoning. It did not eat the four it had because it wanted to find one more first. Someone was sneaking it pills, which makes me think your 'nerve dampers' were not effective. An act of kindness which it used to cache medicine, hoping to die a painless death when it had enough."

"That's impossible," Ernst blustered. "It's just an animal. The Uplift didn't take. It's not smart enough to know how many it would take to kill it."

"It has failed every test," Director Randolph repeated.

"Except the important one," Proxima rasped. "It succeeded in realizing it would rather die than serve you."

"That's ridiculous."

"Perhaps." Maw turned his attention to the cage, where whiteless feral eyes peered from under the blanket. "Little one, these men have hurt you. I think you understand me. You have endured much. You deserve revenge. Choose one of these men, and I will kill him for you."

"You're talking to an animal, you're wasting your time," blustered Ernst, only to take a nervous step back as the little half-shaved animal reared up against the bars. The whiteless eyes in their bandit mask were suddenly alert.

"Choose," said Maw, and there was a collective gasp as a little clawed hand thrust through the bars to point. 

"Kin-Kaid," it rasped, little more than a growl, but intelligible. "Kin-Kaid."

"What, wait," the nerve tech said. "It isn't supposed to be able to talk -"

"Very good, little one," Maw said, then there came a scream and a pop as he bore down with his telekinesis. Kinkaid died slowly, crushed bit by bit. The surviving scientists drew back from the flailing soon-to-be-a-corpse as Ebony Maw popped bones from their sockets, snapped others. He had done this before. He made it last, and all the white the little beast watched, pressed against the bars and grinning. 

Something horribly like a laugh emerged from its fanged jaws as Kinkaid breathed his last. "I told you to get that nerve, Kin-Kaid."

When there was only a shapeless mass of bloody flesh and torn cloth, Ebony Maw made the slightest of gestures. The one occupied animal cage ripped free from its anchors and floated toward him.  


"Your nerve technician was very poor," he said, not bothering to glance at the corpse. "I suggest you find a more competent one."

Pavel Ernst jerked back as a claw thrust from the cage to point at him. "Ernst," the little creature growled eagerly. "Ernst, Ernst, Ernst."

Ebony Maw smiled. "No, little one. I can only kill one for you today. Perhaps later."

The scientists watched in confusion as the members of the Black Order turned to leave, accompanied by the floating cage. Director Randolph was the one to speak.

"That's it? You kill the guards, Tschu and Kinkaid, then just leave?"

"I will also require all the notes and files on this subject," Ebony Maw replied. He rested a hand on the mesh of the cage, watched alertly by its occupant. He was sure it would bite a scientist this incautious. It did not try to bite him. "The rest is unimportant."

That was a lie, of course. But there was a method to such things, summed up by an anecdote told on many worlds. Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Take a man's fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll catch another fish for you to take tomorrow. 

"All this for one little...thing," Corvus said, eyeing the caged beast skeptically.

Maw remembered the bloody operating table, the "training" helmet he'd seen, the booth with one clear side he recognized as a direct neural pain stimulator. Proxima had seen them too and spoke first. "That 'little thing' had the will to resist torture, and the determination to die rather than cooperate. Will and determination are things that Father prizes."

Corvus nodded. Proxima made sense. They had completed their mission. It would be for Thanos to judge whether anything could be made of one little augmented animal that wore a plastic collar stamped **8-9-P-1-3.**


	2. Explorations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the way back to Sanctuary II, three members of the Black Order observe their new pet/captive/crewmember with great interest.

By the standards of the Black Order, the trip back to Sanctuary II was uneventful. That was not to say that nothing happened, merely that no one died.

"Keep an eye on it," the Maw said as he fitted his hands into the ringship's control yoke. "See what you can learn." He paused, his mouth forming unfamiliar words. Eventually he managed them. "Be nice. At least, don't kill it." As he turned his attention to the flight he telekinetically set the cage down next to Midnight and Glaive.

The little half-shaved creature peered quizzically through the bars at the two members of the Black Order. They peered just as quizzically back. It had abandoned the blanket it hid under earlier and for the first time they got a good look.

It was clearly an augmented animal, presumably a Terran one based on what the scientists said. Much of its fur was shaven, revealing a network of surgical scars, medical staple marks and even bolts. Polished metal showed at its collarbones, and more on its back where a mass of scar tissue surrounded larger implants. 

Parts of its pelt were mostly grown back, showing where older operations took place, and in others it was shaven clean, revealing the red lines of stitches, slowly healing surgical scars. It had an unwashed animal musk and stank of disinfectant, presumably a relic of its operations.

Its furry, ringed tail retained its full pelt as did its face, a mask of dark fur surrounding its eyes. Even there the short fur of its muzzle showed ridges where its little face had been cut open. The process of turning a mere animal into mostly-a-biped was clearly a traumatic one.

There was just enough space between the bars for a little clawed hand to reach, and it pawed curiously at Corvus's ankle. For a moment something almost like a smile crossed his face. It was so little, clearly only half grown. Though it was a modified animal and a hideous mass of scars and stitches, it touched him with a child-like curiosity.

Until its hand moved unerringly to the side and snatched the small dagger he kept sheathed to his calf for emergencies. Corvus cursed and leapt to his feet, Midnight leaping in the opposite direction so no part of them was within reach of the little thing and its new weapon. There was just space between the bars for it to get the knife back into the cage.

"Miserable thing!" Proxima restrained Corvus's as he reached for his glaive. The little animal didn't try to reach them through the bars. Instead it backed into the corner of the cage farthest from them and turned the knife on itself.

"Wait." This time it was Corvus who grabbed her hand as she reached for the cage door. "Let's see what it does."

The beast was ignoring them. It slid the blade beneath its plastic collar and began to saw. There was no buckle, no lock, just a solid ring of plastic, meant to stay on until its owner died. The creature was careful and surprisingly skillful, only cutting itself slightly as it sawed harder. But as it cut its movements grew more frantic. It was desperate to get the collar off. As it worked the movements of the collar exposed the raw skin beneath the collar. No operations had shorn that fur. The collar was so tight it alone wore the fur down to the skin. 

"It is going to hurt itself," Proxima said. Corvus watched as she strode to an equipment locker and dug out a tool. When she returned she sat cross-legged in front of the cage.  


"Little one," she said, using the name Maw coined for the beast, "See."

Its eyes brightened when it saw the tool in her hand. She and Corvus watched with great interest as it took the knife from beneath its collar. It knew what the pair of cable shears were and they were the perfect tool for removing its collar. When Proxima unlocked the cage door it edged toward her hand.

"Ah-ah." Proxima drew the tool back out of reach, and pointed at the bloody knife in its hand. "No."

It looked back and forth from the shears to the knife before reluctantly putting the latter down. Bit by bit, watching them both for sudden movements, it edged closer until it shot out its little clawed hands and grabbed the shears.

As it backed away, working the cutting end of the shears around its collar, it looked back into the cage and blinked. The bloody knife was no longer there. It was back in its scabbard on Corvus's ankle. Glaive grinned as it turned back and forth, then stared at him accusingly. Finally it went back to the shears.

They watched it cut the collar and fling the thing away. An angry welt ran around its neck where the plastic had cut into the hide and a trickle of blood trailed down onto its chest where it had cut itself trying to remove it.

Maw must have seen it from his position up front, for a medical kit detached itself from its spot on the wall and slid across the floor toward the little beast. That proved to be a mistake. The moment it saw the clearly labeled first aid kit it let out a panicked whine and disappeared beneath the pull-down seats.

"Oh course," Proxima murmured. "Of course it's afraid of doctors. Why wouldn't it be?"

"I hope it is worth all this trouble," Corvus said. He undid the snaps holding the kit shut and kicked it up against the seats.  
"You want to stop bleeding, here it is," he continued. "No one's going to do it for you."

It was several minutes before anything further developed. Corvus dressed a minor wound he'd picked up during the raid, rather ostentatiously taking a bandage pack and some antibiotics out of the kit. They pretended not to notice when a little clawed hand reached out and dragged the open kit partly under the seats.

They ignored the movements under the seats until there was a flash of bright eyes looking out from the shadows. They could see the white bandage on its neck. "Well, at least it knows how to tend to itself."

"Probably watched the doctors as they worked on it. I wonder how smart it really is." Proxima reached out a foot and dragged the medical kit away now that the creature was done with it. She and Glaive shared a look.

"Smart enough to hate them." Neither said anything, but each quietly shifted their legs away from the creature. The scalpel was missing from the kit. The little creature had already learned an important lesson. Stealing works better when no one sees you do it.

It was another hour back to Sanctuary II. They amused themselves by watching the creature, unfamiliar with being out of a cage, scout out the interior of the cabin while keeping out of sight as best it could. It found and used the relief facilities and when Proxima threw it a food stick it took it under the seats and tore at it as though half starved, which it probably was. 

It wasn't the first time they'd dealt with the young. Thanos's culls produced a lot of orphans. They'd never quite met one like this before, though. 

As the ringship docked it peered from the shadows under the seats, trying to work out what the sounds were. A moment later Maw reappeared.

"I see you didn't kill it. Good." Corvus and Proxima watched it ease out from under the seat. Maw seemed to have already won its trust to some extent and it crept closer to his leg as he watched from his towering height. When the hatch opened and a bustle of maintenance crew entered it jumped, looked around for a place to hide, then suddenly ran up Maw's leg, using all four limbs and its small short claws to grip his clothing.

Seven feet off the deck it clung to his shoulder, shying away from the Sakaaran maintenance techs who shot it curious glances but said nothing. They didn't dare do more than glance at Maw's new pet, or whatever the thing was. They'd seen what happened to people who got on Ebony Maw's bad side and so had the creature. Being close to such a powerful protector made it bold and it climbed higher until it half stood on his shoulder.

"Well then." Maw looked at the little furry muzzle poking from behind his shoulder. "Just as well, someone might step on you. That would be a waste."

"We will have to get you some clothing," he went on. "And a name."

"Sub-ject Eight Nine Papa One Three," it rasped, its tone one of automatic, conditioned response to the query. Then it shook itself, and growled.

"A better name than that. Let's go see Father, shall we?"

Ebony Maw strode out of the ringship, Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight right on his heels. Proxima spun the cut plastic collar on one finger as she walked. They didn't say anything, though they saw 89P13's free hand surreptitiously feeling around on Maw's upper body for things to steal. Nor did they say anything about the scalpel it had stuck to its back with medical tape. They couldn't wait to see what it would do next.


	3. Nebula

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nebula would never have believed she'd meet a kindred spirit in a form of a little half-shaved animal. And yet, here she was.

Ebony Maw glided down the corridor, motions calm and unhurried. Just the same Glaive and Midnight had to step smartly to keep up. Though each was well over six feet tall Maw was taller still, and that only made the half-shaved creature clinging to the Black Order commander's shoulder look even smaller than it was.

As Maw strode along the crowded gangway it climbed still higher until it was crouched on his shoulder, looking down at passing soldiers and technicians from its newfound height. Armored Sakaarans stopped and stared, but only for a moment. They knew Ebony Maw could kill them with little more than a thought and was trusted enough by Thanos that he could do just that and suffer no consequences. The crowd parted as Maw moved, leaving a respectful space around him and his new "pet".

Then two more members of the Black Order appeared from a side hall. Cull Obsidian towered over even Maw and next to him was the much smaller but almost as dangerous daughter of Thanos, Nebula.  


Cull tilted his massive head and rumbled an alien phrase that Maw's translator filtered into more recognizable words.

"Test subject we recovered from the lab we raided," Maw replied. The group of five Black Order members ignored the flow of traffic that split around them in the corridor. They were above such things as noticing the lower ranks. 

"And you let it climb on you?" Nebula peered doubtfully at the mostly shaved creature, whose little pointed muzzle and dark eyes peered back at her.

"It may be useful. Nebula, if I might have a moment." Formal and polite to the last, Maw dismissed Cull, Corvus and Proxima with a slight gesture. The latter two looked disappointed as they left. No doubt they wanted to see what trouble Maw's odd little pet got into. It wasn't the first time a curiosity like this ended up on board the Sanctuary II. Most often they met gruesome ends. 89P13 would only make one mouthful for a roaming Outrider who didn't realize the little raccoon was something it shouldn't eat. 

"I must speak to our sire, and this...person." maw reached over his shoulder to touch 89P13, only for the raccoon to scramble out of reach across his back like a pink-and-fur spider, "May be of interest to Father. I must review our mission before introducing them. I would like you to keep an eye on it for a short time."

"Me? I am no babysitter." Just the same, she followed Maw as he climbed into a rail car. Sanctuary II was so enormous that such cars were the only practical way to get places quickly. Teleportation was too hardware and energy intensive to use for casual intraship travel.

Nebula sat in the opposite seat from Maw, glowering at the little face peering past her superior's shoulder. Though it was not phrased as an order, she knew that one simply did not say 'no' to the Maw without good reason.

As Maw sat back in the seat 89P13 appeared from behind him. The little raccoon tentatively padded down the row of seats toward the manual controls. It seemed fascinated by the blinking lights and control yoke, the rhythmic hiss of the tunnel passing by, the smell of electricity from the superconducting coils levitating the car.

"Ah!" Maw raised a finger. "Do not touch." The little raccoon peered over its shoulder at them and as it turned they both realized it was male, at least judging by common species norms. Not that it mattered. Thanos valued competence and loyalty, not the nature of his children's genitalia, and many of his followers were alien enough that concepts like gender were unimportant.

89P13 glanced longingly at the controls, hesitated, then jerked back as Maw reached out a telekinetic feeler and shut the door to the control compartment in its - his - face. It tried the latch on the door, found it immovable, and made its way down the row of seats. As it walked on all fours it turned to look at Nebula. 89P13 froze in mid step, staring.

"What are you looking at?" Nebula growled and looked away. She looked back and found the little raccoon was still staring. When he dropped down off the seat and rose to his feet so he could reach out toward her leg Nebula reflexively cocked her foot back to punt the little raccoon.

"Nebula." Maw spoke without looking at her. "I have yet to learn all I would like about him, or report to our sire. I chose you to mind him because I trust you more than the others. Don't disappoint me."  


"Yes, sir." She pulled her foot back, but still glared. "Keep your grabby little hands to yourself, you."

A minute later the car arrived at its station and 89P13 climbed back onto Maw's shoulder. They disembarked in the headquarters quadrant, and Maw waved her toward a diplomatic lounge as he himself walked toward the throne room. Before he left he extended his arm.

"Go with her," he said to the raccoon, and 89P13, after a glance at the crowded hall full of creatures ten times his mass, climbed reluctantly down the arm and jumped onto Nebula's shoulder. With a scrabble of claws on cybernetic plating he got a grip and Nebula sourly entered the lounge.

He was so close she could feel the body heat radiated by his shaven little body, smell the musk and what must be disinfectant from the operations that left him covered in scars. Whiskers brushed her ear as he craned his neck, looking around the room for a place to jump down. With an inquisitive animal chitter he turned in place on her shoulder until his ringed tail, the only part of him with a full coat of fur except his face, poked her in the cheek.

"Get off." Nebula sat down a sofa and shook her arm, but the raccoon's claws latched into the seams of her cybernetic arm. His his hind claws, that is. It wasn't until she felt the maintenance plate on her shoulder open that she realized what his forepaws were doing. 

"I said off!" She slapped the beast off her shoulder and claws skidded over metal as it lost its grip and went flying. She'd hit it harder than she meant to and it skipped off the back of the sofa and hit the armored bulkhead with a thump.

Nebula grimaced. Maw would be...irritated...if she'd killed it. Fortunately it scrambled back to its feet, shook its head to clear it, then limped toward her, looking so small and lost and lonely she almost felt sorry for it.

Almost. It jumped up on the sofa next to her and she saw the scalpel, still with its blade cover on, taped to its back. No sooner had it risen to its feet there then it reached for her shoulder again.  


"I said stop." She cocked her fist, ready to crush with one swing. She sighed and pushed it away instead. "Why are you doing that? Do you even have a name?"

"Sub-Ject Eight Nine Papa One Three," it said in an automatic way that made her think it was conditioned to reply to the word 'name'. It shifted its right arm, or foreleg depending on whether it was on all fours, and she realized she's hurt it when she slapped it against the wall. Just the same it reached out, right hand shaking, for her shoulder.

"Stop it." She put the flat of her hand against its bony little chest, feeling the stubble on the warm skin and the smooth bolts on its collarbones. That was when she realized what she was looking at.  


This little thing, covered with scars and with bolts sticking out of its back and chest, had been torn apart and turned from an animal into whatever it was now. Slowly she drew her hand back and felt the cool metal of her cheek. There was no little left of her, of what she used to be. Just like the little beast, turned into something it was never meant to be. In her case, to make her better...or so Father said.  


"Why did they do it?" The little creature looked at her in confusion. "Why did they change you?"

It blinked. It pawed at its shoulder uncertainly, where the bruise showed. Could it even speak, beyond saying its designation?

It could. "Why did they change _you?"_

Nebula shook her head. Another question, then. "Why do you want to touch my shoulder?"

"Is wrong," it said, and reached out, one hand trembling. "Works wrong."

"How can you know that?"

It shrugged. "Sounds wrong," it said. Its little hands found the seam in the sofa cushion and felt along it as though it were blind. But it wasn't; it saw just fine.  


Nebula rotated her shoulder, felt something catch. Something had given way when she was blown through a bulkhead on her last mission. She'd planned to have it looked at, since she'd need to go through the back maintenance panel on her shoulder and doing it herself would require a mirror and a lot of contortion.

"What can you do? With no tools?"

"Fix." The little creature gripped its head for a moment. Amongst all the scars she saw the single access port there, a smaller version of the one on its back. It was a cyborg, partly machine just like her. Her brain could be accessed and programmed via a port like that.

This little mangled beast...why had they made it? As a mechanic? Able to get into small spaces where a man could not fit? She watched its clever little hands twitch with the conditioned-in need to work. She knew it was stronger than it looked. Maybe it really could work on her without tools.

Did it hate them, its creators? Or did love and hate war in it as it did in her?

"Leave the blade." She pointed at the scalpel it had hidden. "And I will let you work on me."

Its eyes brightened at the thought of work. It pulled the scalpel off its back with a tearing of tape and stuck it to the sofa before stepping forward.

The access panel on her shoulder had a pressure seal and a latch you were supposed to need tools to turn. It took it less than a second to get it open once more. She couldn't see what it was doing but she felt the scrape of claws inside her arm as it worked.

"No move," it said. "No move arm now." She felt something click inside her shoulder and realized it had cut the power to her arm. That was supposed to be impossible without a diagnostic kit.  


It was humming as it worked and she watched its little shaven ears twitch as it focused its full attention on its work. It stared vacantly into the distance, 'seeing' through its sensitive hands as they felt around inside her arm. It didn't need its eyes to work. It sniffed, tilted its head, pulled a burnt component out of her arm and tasted it. "Bad."

Hearing, smell, touch taste. It used all its senses to work, eyes, curiously enough, least of all. But its eyes worked just fine.

It had only needed to look at her once to realize she was as broken as it was.


	4. Thanos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanos of Titan decides it is time to meet his newest son.

"You see, sire," Maw said two rooms away. A dozen floating screens surrounded him, showing two views of the room Nebula and the creature were in, plus scans of the little beast. Naturally a 'diplomatic lounge' was bugged from to to bottom. An actual diplomat would know that. Nebula didn't.

Thanos, a head taller than even Maw, nodded as he watched. A blown-up view of the creature's brain showed a dozen implants of various sizes. 89P13's unassuming body and feral face masked a treasure trove of implanted technology. The Titan was well familiar with cybernetics, having implanted them in several of the Black Order himself, and had little interest in the linear motors that increased the raccoon's strength fivefold, nor the bolts and braces that helped turn it from a quadruped to mostly-a-biped. All his attention was on the brain, and its hands.

"They took a creature from Terra," Maw said, "A creature with naturally clever forepaws and a large chunk of its brain devoted to touch, and they augmented it again and again. They had no idea how well they wrought. I have read their files. They have imbued into it an affinity for technology, piloting, strategy, tactics, and more, but it refused to cooperate so they thought they had failed. I do not think they did. It does not look like much."

He waved at the monitor screen, and they watched as Nebula let the little beast approach and touch her shoulder. In seconds it had somehow opened the access panel and was up to its wrists in the workings underneath.

"What is it doing?"

Ebony Maw touched a control, adding sound to the image. They could hear the raccoon chitter as it worked.

"Fix," 89P13 muttered. "Fix, fix, fixed." It snapped the panel back shut and grabbed Nebula's metal wrist in its little hands.

"Is wrong," the little raccoon said. "Open."

Maw nodded, and touched the screen to cut off the sound. "It does not look like much," he repeated. "But you can see it already knows how to work on augmented individuals. That is only the start. It is but a child, sire. There is no telling what it will achieve as it grows."

Thanos studied the scans, and the hovering images from the creature's lab files. He'd seen work like this before. For now, the little creature's brain was a mixture of organics and implants, but as it matured it would become a synthesis of the two. It was already an intuitive technical savant. When it was older, more experienced...the synthesis might fail. Such cyborgs usually did. But if it didn't?

Thanos returned his attention to the surveillance screens. The little creature was working on Nebula's knee now. It had dismantled a lamp and a comm panel for parts. All without tools, though it little clawed hands were scratched and bruised from the work. Their internal augmentation did not make the flesh invulnerable.

Thanos rubbed his chin. Conditioning. It was compelled to work, enjoyed it. There might not be much actual intellect in that little skull, just blueprints and technical savvy. How much did it think, beyond needing to work?

"When you offered to kill one of its makers, it chose one?"

"Yes, my lord. The nerve technician whose failures caused it to suffer as it was operated on."

Thanos considered the scalpel stuck to the cushion of the sofa, and the bandage on the creature's shaven neck. The first thing it did when it had the chance was take a weapon. It was covered with stitches, scars, even protruding bolts. It was likely in constant pain. 

To look at it working, you'd think it a mere mechanic. Those were useful, whether willing or as slaves. But it had refused to work for its makers. Out of sheer stubbornness it would rather suffer and die than help those who had hurt it. There was a mind there, then. But the anger bottled up in that little body must reach unfathomable depths.

Technical skills were not valuable if their owner couldn't be reasoned with. It was just a child, though. If raised properly, rewarded rather than punished....

He returned his attention to the little creature, still working on his daughter's knee.

"I think it is time we met," Thanos said.

He watched as Maw entered the lounge and coaxed the little creature away from its work. Reluctantly it snapped Nebula's knee back together, and Thanos watched as his daughter tested the range of motion. Considering the scans, the creature managed to repair quite a lot of damage in a short time. And all without tools. With tools and materials it might even improve her cybernetics.

On the screen the little creature leapt up onto Maw's hip and climbed him like a tree. It trusted its rescuer. Already it was bonding. To Maw of all people, but the lost and lonely child clung tight to his rescuer. And to his daughter, too. Skill, anger, a desperate need for love. There was much to unpack here.

As it scurried along the sofa to clamber onto Maw the scalpel was suddenly gone, palmed in passing.

Thanos looked at the little creature, this 89P13, and saw something. Potential. A number wouldn't do. He needed a name.

With a flick of a finger he scrolled through the files taken from the lab. Here was the record of the creature's capture on Terra, or rather of its parents. Those little creatures had not survived the lab, nor its siblings. Only 89P13.

Another entry. Zoological information on its species. _Procyon Lotor,_ the common raccoon.

The door slid open, and he heard Maw's unhurried pace. There was a click of claws as the little creature scrambled down off Maw and onto the table.

"Hello, little one." Thanos knelt down to the creature's level. "I hear you've already met my daughter. And helped her, as well. I am pleased. The augmentations I installed in her are subject to damage in battle, just as is flesh."

His tone was gentle, measured. Just the same he saw the little half-shaven creature tense, and knew why. Maw stepped silently into view and met his gaze. The most powerful of his lieutenants had seen this game before and said nothing. Deliberately, Thanos turned his back, busying himself with the hovering scans as he talked.

"Cybernetics, augmentations can improve us. Many of my children have them. Most I have installed myself. It is the province of a maker to..."

 _Maker._ 89P13 plucked the scalpel from his back. _Maker. Cut into her. Changed her. Will change me too._ One little hand pulled the cover off the blade. _No._

Maw watched the little creature gather its strength, scalpel in hand. An invisible whisker of telekinesis touched the blade, ready in case it turned it upon itself. Silently it tensed, then hurled itself at Thanos, poised to stab and slash.

The giant was fifty times as massive as the little raccoon. Just the same he was fast. As 89P13 leapt off the table Thanos spun, one enormous hand plucking the raccoon out of the air. 89P13 snarled, stabbing Thanos's hand over and over only for the razor-sharp blade to barely scratch his skin. Thanos was much too tough for such slight strength to harm him without a very special weapon.

Gently Thanos held 89P13, though he could crush him with the merest flex of his hand. Maw telekinetically plucked the scalpel from its grip.

"I know why you do this," he said as 89P13 snarled and squirmed. "You're afraid. Afraid it will happen again."

With his free hand he gently stroked the raccoon's ears, which flattened as it tried to bite his fingers. He let it, let 89P13 bite down until it realized its teeth were no more use than the scalpel. When it released his hand he returned to petting, and gradually it calmed in his grip.

"It will not happen again," he said gently. "What they did to you was horrible. I will not repeat their mistake."

"Did to her," the little raccoon growled. "Why?"

"I am going to put you down," Thanos said. "Let us talk, little one."

A moment later the little raccoon was pacing the table, working off its anger. There was much to work off and a furry little face glared up at him. "Why?"

"My children are special to me," Thanos said. "Nebula wanted very much to be a good daughter, but she failed again and again. She needed to be stronger so she could succeed. I helped her."

"Shitty job," 89P13 snapped, and Thanos blinked. Of course it should be no surprise that a child would pick up foul language. Especially one as traumatized as this one. "Bad work."

Thanos settled down cross-legged by the table so the raccoon didn't need to stare up at him.

"You are very special too," he said, and brushed 89P13's ears with one huge finger. This time it didn't shrink away from the touch. "They hurt you, but now you are very special indeed. You can have a place here. Family. A home. No one will hurt you any more, little one."

"Hurt them back?" The first spark of eagerness.

"There are many people in the universe who oppose me," Thanos said. He looked down at his newest son. "Many people i need to hurt. Will you help me?"

"Yes," the little raccoon growled. Its little clawed hands gripped the handle of the scalpel, though Maw had snapped off the blade. 

"Yes, Father."


	5. Tools

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Tool' can have multiple meanings. It can mean a device used to do work...or the person doing it.

"The next thing you need," Thanos said as his huge fingers lightly stroked the little raccoon's ears, "Is a name."

89P13 flinched, and in a way far too much like an automaton began to recite. "Sub-Ject Eight Nine Papa -"

"No." Thanos put one finger on the raccoon's muzzle, and the recitation stopped. "That is what _they_ called you. You aren't their property, little one. You never were."  


"But," 89P13 was visibly struggling with the concept. "Only name I have."

"Ssh." Thanos dragged a floating screen around so 89P13 could see it. Images, a video clip, words. _Procyon Lotor. Waschbaren. Orso Lavatore._ The common raccoon.  


"This is what you were," he said gently. "It is not what you are now. You need a new name, so you make a clean break from the past."

"Rak-koon," the little creature said. "Rak?"

"Rak it is," Thanos said. "Would you like to help me with something, Rak?"

"Sire," Ebony Maw said. "If I may, I am not sure when last he ate."

"Hungry," Rak agreed. "Tall ones gave food in ship, but not enough."

Tall ones. That was everyone, to Rak. Maw showed him the food dispenser and how to program it. Rak was a quick study. Soon he had an improbably large plate of food and was wolfing it down. He preferred raw or natural-looking food and was not a picky eater. Small fruit, a spiny fish, and hand-sized crustaceans halfway between crabs and cockroaches were picked apart and devoured. 

Thanos used the opportunity to make a call. By the time the little raccoon burped and pushed the plate back into the food slot (Maw had to show him that the return was a different slot, but like most things he'd only need to be shown once) a Sakaaran arrived with a box the size of a man's chest.

"This," Thanos said to the little raccoon, "Is a prize. If you help me with a little project, it's yours."

"What is it," said wide-eyed Rak, but Thanos just smiled.

"See," he said, and flicked away the hovering screens, replacing them with new ones. "This world resists me. We have just defeated their main fleet, but as you can see, there are still orbital forts, minefields -"

Rak wasn't listening. Little clawed hands reached out, expanding some screens, diminishing others. The vacant look in his eyes showed that he was not fully aware of what he was doing. The vast reservoir of knowledge poured into that little augmented brain had yet to gel. He used it instinctively now, a child genius unaware of his own skills. Thanos watched him flick through screen after screen. Known enemy fleet strength, population, industrial capacity, planetary defenses. For several minutes Rak worked, then sat back, thinking.

One little hand toyed with a seemingly inconsequential data screen. Military versus civilian space traffic figures. Then Rak grabbed another screen and dragged it bigger. He pulled until the world with its cobwebs of city lights was no bigger than an orange, and the three small moons were in view.

"Is not enough," he said with utter certainty. "Here, here." He poked a claw at the orbital forts, another into the Known Fleet Composition tab. "Not enough."

With his claws he dragged the three small - by celestial standards - moons onto one screen. Each was no more than a hundred miles wide. Diminutive, by planetary standards. 

Very large, by orbital fortress standards. Using data from the sole scout drone that got close enough for good scans, he examined the surface of the moons. The weapons emplaced there were well concealed. He found them nevertheless.

"Here," he said, pointing a claw at the moons. "Trap."

"Very good," Thanos said, and shared a look with Maw. It had taken his tactical department hours and a dozen men to reach the same conclusion Rak had in five minutes. There was an unexplained gap in the military potential of the world and its observed strength. Rak and intuited that the missing resources were poured into turning the moons into fortresses. The makers of the little raccoon had indeed wrought better than they knew.

This world, long since conquered and stripped of half its population, was a data point now. Records. Just a test. There would be others. 

"Now the prize, Rak." Thanos set the box on the table where the little raccoon sat. It was much larger than he was. Without needing to be told little clawed hands snapped the latches open and his eyes went wide and bright and he saw the array of tools inside.

"Yours," Thanos said as Rak began to inventory his new tools in the manic way that would become so familiar. Wrenches, sockets, drivers, all simple mechanical tools, plus the whole underside of the lid was covered with diagnostic kits and other electronics. Rak chattered to himself as he counted them. With his son thoroughly distracted, Thanos stepped away to speak to Maw.

"There is much potential here," he breathed. He was certain Rak's animalistic hearing was excellent, but the clink of tools should drown them out. "Well done."

"Thank you, sire." They turned as the clatter of tools stopped. Had the child overheard them?

No. Rak, belly full and still recovering from the stress and pain of the lab, was curled up in the tool box, sound asleep. He didn't seem to mind the cool metal tools pressed against his shaved hide and clutched a diagnostic kit tight to his chest. It was, perhaps, the first thing he ever truly owned.

"I will have suitable quarters prepared," Maw said, and Thanos nodded. Rak would need a proper workshop, and training. Brilliant as he was, his mind still needed time to mature. Direction.  


He watched Maw ever so carefully lift the tool box with his telekinesis. For a moment it obscured the world whose defenses Rak had so quickly analyzed.

Rak's insight hadn't killed anyone today. Soon it would. Billions would die as the little raccoon helped Thanos in his mission. It was good.

Maw's fingers gently brushed the curled-up raccoon's nape, then snatched back to avoid its reflexive attempt to bite him in its sleep. No doubt any touch there had led to pain, once. Not any more.

Maw smiled. "Welcome to the family, little one."


	6. Exploration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 89P13/Rak wakes in a strange place, and explores.

89P13 swam up toward consciousness. He hurt. Everything hurt. Every bone, tendon, joint. He didn't know why. It was just his normal. Pain was normal.

The last shred of dream lingered. Scalpels. Lights. A cold, metal table against his shaven chest. They were working on his back today. The nerve technician, Kinkaid, touched him with the damping wand. 89P13 knew it was supposed to make the pain stop. It never did.

He flinched at the memory and woke. Some things were the same. Cool metal against his skin, a rectangular enclosure around m. Cloth between him and the chilly air. Only his nose was out from under the blanket. 89P13 sniffed.

It was different. There was no smell of man. He knew the scent of each of his makers. Randolph, the director. Ernst, who held the scalpel. The others. They'd been taken from Terra to work on Terran animals. There had been others. The other ones like him, the one with sharp white claws who escaped and almost killed a guard before being shot dead. The one with the thick red tail and its white tip. All gone. 

The scents were gone. No man, no other animals.

89P13 remembered. Kinkaid, the man with the nerve wand. Kinkaid was dead, crushed by the first of the Tall Ones who came to the lab. There was the Chief Tall One, then the male and female with long sharp things, then a confusion of others. The blue one with parts like his. He'd worked on her metal parts, tried to fix them. She was like him. Broken. Mangled by...

Father. 89P13 remembered. He wasn't 89P13 any more. He was Rak now. Chief Tall One had taken him to Father. They let him pick a name. They said he was part of a family now. What did that mean?  


Metal clinked as he woke and shifted. Tools. He was lying on his tools. Rak moved under the blanket, feeling the rectangular shape of the tool box around him. He fit into it easily. Three of him could sleep together in a box this size, if there any more like him. There weren't.

He'd fallen asleep wrapped around a diagnostic kit. Rak turned it on, pulled out a probe and socketed it into the port atop his shaved skull. The other probe, with a bit of reaching, fit into the larger port on his back. He didn't know how he knew how to use it. He just did. It was easy. Machines were easy.

It hurt to move. Rak ignored it. Pain was normal. He looked at the screen as the kit polled his cybernetics. A model of his body built up on the screen. So many colors, layers. He didn't understand what they were, but he knew what to do with them. Rak flicked away layers until he got to the bottom one.

A little animal, half grown. He remembered hearing his makers talk, seen the words on Father's screen. Rak-Koon. He was Rak now. He'd picked his name.

A little skeleton, twisted and modified. Better hands. Limbs torn away, changed, put back on. Ribs crushed to change the shape of his chest, give him shoulders. Bolts and braces. Some showed up on the outside, some didn't. He could still walk on all fours and often did, but he could stand up and work with his hands now.

Next layer. More bolts, pins, staples popped into view. The linear motors along each bone, tied to natural and artificial muscles. He was stronger than before. They made him better. So they said.  


Next layer. Yellow and pink and red everywhere. Inflammation. His body didn't like all the metal, ceramic, plastic, synthetics.

They should have waited until he was full grown. They hadn't. He remembered hearing them talk. Experimental cybernetics that would grow as he did. He was only the second recipient. The other died. He survived.

They hadn't waited, and now his body struggled to grow and adapt to cybernetics that also grew and adapted. Rak knew why they didn't wait. They wanted to see if their idea worked. They didn't care that it hurt all the time.

Top layer. What he looked like on the outside. A twisted thing, unnatural. Freak, they'd called him. Frankenstein. Not what he was meant to be. What was he meant to be?  


Maybe when his fur grew back in he could forget what he looked like under it. The scars, stitches, staples, bolts. Maybe.

Rak turned the kit off and stowed the probes. Chief Tall One had shown him how to use the food machine before he slept. He'd eaten a lot. Rak crawled out from under the blanket. Tools clinked as he climbed out of the tool box. The urge to sort them was hard to resist. He sorted them last night, before he fell asleep, but he was sure he'd made mistakes. They had to be arranged just so. He had to know where each one was.

Soon. He found the Chief Tall One's relief unit and used it, balanced precariously on the rim. Must not fall in. The hole at the bottom was just barely too small for him to fit through, but the sides were frictionless. He knew by looking at them that if he fell in he wouldn't be able to climb out. He was too small to reach the rim.

Next to the relief unit was a basin and valves. There was a larger space nearby that Chief Tall One must use to wash himself. He could smell the water from the drain. There was water here too and the basin was big enough. Rak turned on a valve. Shockingly cold water came out. He jumped back and almost fell off the rim of the basin.

The other valve. Hot water, too hot. Rak reasoned it out. Hot and cold together. Rak climbed into the sink, washed himself. Get the smell of lab-stink off. Get clean.

His naked skin was easy to wash. He didn't like doing it. Every place he touched, scars. Stitches. Memories of how they got there. But he had to wash. Had to get the smell off. He found a block of something that made foam when he rubbed it against himself, and had its own slight scent. Better than the lab smell. He washed until his skin hurt.

He loved the water. Loved to touch it. He never had this much before, just a bottle in his cage. When he wet his forepaws (hands now) they softened. His sense of touch, already much better than the Tall Ones, got even better. Little hairs below his claws let him know when he was about to touch something, like sensors. He didn't need to look at something to work, just touch.

He washed his tail last. It still had fur. The Makers hadn't shaved it. They talked about cutting it off but never did. Its fur and the short pelt around his eyes were all the fur he had until the rest grew back.  


There. No more lab-stink. Rak turned off the water and immediately shivered. No fur. Cold. He jumped down from the basin and got the towel out of the tool box.

He couldn't resist organizing the tools. They had to be just so. He managed to drag himself away after only one run through them. He could spend all day just sorting them over and over, but he was cold. He wrapped the blanket around himself and explored.

The long room had three smaller rooms attached. One was where the relief unit, basin and wash place were. One was full of hanging clothes for the Chief Tall One. He climbed up the fabric and found himself in a place higher up, a compartment full of segments of armor. Chief Tall One wore armor sometimes. He probably got them out and put them on by thinking about it. Chief Tall One could do that.

He felt the armor, weighed it in his hands, tasted it. He knew he could make it better. He didn't know how he knew. He just did. Not now.

Rak climbed down the fabric and jumped the last couple of feet. The third small room held a long raised thing and Chief Tall One was asleep on it. The room smelled of him. Not a human smell. Chief Tall One wasn't human. Rak pulled out one of the drawers under the bed. More clothes. The Tall Ones wore lots of clothes. Maybe because they didn't have fur. No armor here.

He wanted armor. He wanted clothes too. He was cold. The pain wasn't bad now. It was always worse when he woke, then faded. 

Above the bed he heard a whisper of air. There was a vent, protected by a grill. Rak climbed a series of shelves until he could reach it. He could smell many things on the air. Machines. Flesh. Other things he couldn't readily identify.

Bolts held the grill on. Rak remembered his tools. The vent was much too small for a Tall One. Easily big enough for him.

Later. Rak climbed back down the shelves, only disturbing the clutter of knickknacks a little. He would look at them later. He was tired still. From the bottom shelf he leapt onto the bed.

Ebony Maw was a sound sleeper. Rak was cold. The Chief Tall One was warm. Rak curled up against Maw's thigh, soaking up the warmth through the bedclothes.

He was warmer now, and safe. Rak felt safe. The last time he felt that way...

Warm fur and safety. All he remembered of his mother. Before the bad times, before the bright lights and scalpels. His mother was gone, but Chief Tall One was here. Rak yawned, curled up next to Maw and fell asleep.


	7. Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An injury inflicted by accident causes a frightened child to question whether he should trust one of the few people in the world who hadn't already hurt him.

Ebony Maw was a sound sleeper. But when woke he did it suddenly and completely, in full command of his faculties. So when he woke and felt something stirring next to his thigh, one thin layer of cloth from his flesh, he reacted instantly. There was a startled yelp and a clang as he picked the intruder up and pinned it telekinetically to the metal bulkhead.

The instant that happened, Maw knew he'd made a mistake. The resistance to his telekinetic push was so slight that the intruder must be tiny. And there was only one tiny living thing in his quarters.  


It wasn't the first time someone crept up on him as he slept. You didn't become part of the Black Order without making a lot of enemies. Culled races often raised champions and sent them to assassinate the Children of Thanos. The best managed to make it onto Sanctuary II itself, usually by pretending to join Thanos's legions. All of the Order were periodically attacked. They liked to think it kept their senses sharp and so did not push for improved security. Proxima Midnight even left her quarters door unlocked because she enjoyed the resulting fights so much. 

Maw just pinned the assassins to the wall and called for guards so he or Thanos (depending on the nature of the assassin) could take his time on the ensuing torture session.

But this "assassin" was diminutive. A shove meant to pin a man-sized creature to the metal wall flung the little thing with brutal force. Maw heard the crack of impact and opened his eyes, sure he'd just killed the very creature he rescued from the lab not one day before.

He sucked air through his teeth as he saw that Rak was not dead. The little creature was pinned hard to the wall, bruises already forming on shaven skin from an impact that by all rights should have killed him. Blood at the corner of his mouth hinted at internal injuries. Maw released his telekinetic grip and caught the little body as it dropped from the wall.

An unfamiliar feeling tugged at him as Rak tried weakly to push his hands away. He felt sorry for the little creature. Sorry for hurting him. Maw was the leader of the Black Order. Loyalty to Thanos was his only consideration. In that service he had ravaged worlds, participated in the deaths of billions. The Titan's remorseless edict that half of each population must die had necessarily killed many, many children.

But not this one. Rak was a Child of Thanos now, with great, though undeveloped gifts that could be of use to the Titan. It was not his place to take away such a valuable tool. To so would be to fail Thanos.

And worse than that. Rak, raised in a lab and knowing only pain and cruelty, had trusted him. Now the little ringtailed child tried to push him away. Hurt as he was Rak could only think of escape. For the first time in years Maw felt something he'd long left behind. Guilt.

"Little one." He cradled the battered little body in his hands. Rak's right shoulder, already bruised from the incident with Nebula he'd watched from afar, wasn't working right. The little creature's cybernetically augmented skeleton had let him survive the blow but the bruises were multiplying before his eyes. A whimper of pain emerged from Rak's muzzle as he tried to push Maw's hands away once more. There was so little blood in that tiny body that every drop that fell from Rak's muzzle was precious. Maw instinctively caught them with his telekinesis, but for what? He couldn't just push them back in.

"Little one, I am sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. You startled me. I thought you an assassin." Bright little eyes looked back at him and Maw actually winced as he saw Rak shrink away, afraid of being hurt again.

Rak didn't say anything. The whites of his eyes, seen now that wide-eyed fear exposed them, were bloodshot. Concussion too? And the bruises were violent purple now. Internal injuries were almost certain.

He couldn't put Rak down. The hurt little thing would surely try to hide in whatever nook it could find and Maw knew prompt medical attention was vital. Telekinetically Maw stripped off his bedclothes, tearing away the shirt and stepping out of the pants, and pulled on what he could of his normal garb the same way. The door flew open and the guards in the hall stared wide-eyed as Maw, naked from the waist up, strode past. They had to step smartly to keep up.

"Infirmary," Maw said to the closer guard, who was staring at the little creature cupped in his hands. "Run ahead and tell them I am bringing in a Child of Thanos with blunt force injuries."  


The Kree expatriate sprinted ahead, either out of loyalty, fear of Maw's vengeance if he tarried, or both. Soldiers and technicians made way for Maw, most of them staring at the little shaven thing in his hands. It worried him that Rak had ceased to struggle. It most likely meant the little creature was slipping into shock.

The infirmary door snapped open and various patients and medics leapt out of his way, or limped in some cases. The Kree guard was there and two medics were already waiting with a box full of blankets. Maw recognized a litter box for an Orloni or similar creature but it was clean and the blankets were soft.

Unfortunately the moment Rak saw the attentive medics he recognized them as doctors and in his limited experience there was only one possible reaction. As the first doctor reached out with a medical scanner Rak's fangs went through the web of skin between the man's thumb and forefinger.

The man cursed and tried to yank his hand back, to find his arm locked fast. Only then did he realize just who had brought this odd little patient. Maw loomed over him, speaking calmly. Or as calmly as he could muster, in this moment.

"This is a Child of Thanos," he said to the doctor. "He is young, and hurt, and afraid. You will treat him with the greatest care." He glanced down at the blood dripping from Rak's muzzle where it sank into the the man's hand. "Or else I will be very displeased."

"Understood, sir," said the medic, who had the same crystal clear realization that others had earlier. Irritate Maw and die horribly. _Not_ irritating Maw required not prying the fangs out of his own flesh by force. Or to just let it keep biting. 

"Diagnostic kit," he said as calmly as he could. "Also general anti-inflammatories. Someone get the scanner I dropped. And someone look this thing," he paused, sensing Maw's glare, "This child's planet of origin up and get some blood plasma synthesized." Bruising this extensive implied likely internal injuries.

To his surprise, when the orderly brought the diagnostic kit the little creature reacted. With a sureness of much training or perhaps, less pleasantly, programming, it snatched the first probe and socketed it into the port in its skull. The only reason it didn't grab the second was that its increasingly swollen right shoulder wouldn't let it. The orderly plugged it into the larger port on its upper back.

"He is Terran," Maw said. "His species is called raccoon."

"Rak," said the little creature, stirring in the blanket-filled box. He had only a fraction his usual strength. He still did not release the bite, speaking around a mouthful of flesh as the doctor ran the scanner over him one-handed.

"Rak," Maw said, in a voice that the astonished onlookers could only call gentle, "I am sorry I hurt you. And I know you are afraid. Of course you are. You don't trust doctors. Why would you? They only hurt you."

He put his hand next to the doctor's, where the blood stained the blanket. "But these won't. If they do, I will hurt them, just as I hurt the one who you chose before."

He leaned down to talk to Rak, his voice so quiet only the closest could hear him. "They need to help you, Rak. They need their hands, and they need your trust. So if you need to bite someone, bite me. I will stay with you."

Slowly Rak's one good hand reached out, the tiny fingers gripping Ebony Maw's wrist. Just as slowly he took his fangs out of the doctor's hand until the man was able to stick quick-heal patches on the bleeding fang wounds and go back to using it.

Maw let Rak pull his hand close until his skin touched the shaven, scarred hide of the child. But Rak did not bite him. Rak wasn't angry. Anger was what held the fear back and there was no holding it back now. He was shaking. Terrified. A frightened child surrounded by clean white coats and the smell of disinfectant. Surrounded by what he feared most, with nothing and no one to cling to for comfort.  


Except Maw. Maw felt the one strong little hand holding him tight, and the shaven cheek pressed against his hand.

"Dislocated shoulder," said one of the doctors as he looked at a hovering scan. "Torn ligaments here, here, here. Cracked rib, two, make that four. Internal tearing. There's blood pooling below the diaphragm. Look at all that augmentation. It's the only reason he's still alive."

There was a collective gasp as more layers of scan built up and the doctors realized how much work had been done on the little augment. They muttered among themselves as to how to treat all the injuries, both ones caused by Nebula and Maw and the effects of too many implant surgeries and too little care.

"First priority is to stop that internal bleeding," said the doctor with the patched hand. He was ignoring Maw. Professionalism won out over fear. This was his patient now. Even Thanos's doctors were still doctors. The ones in the infirmaries at least. There were less pleasant ones.

When Nebula arrived, half an hour later, she stopped dead in her tracks. The doctors were working on Rak's shoulder. Half a dozen leads and tubes connected the little creature to various mechanisms. Dozens of scans hung in midair, some overlapped, some floating by themselves.

A few attendants treated injuries to other patients but the focus of the senior medics was entirely on one little raccoon.

And there asleep in a chair next to it all was Ebony Maw, most powerful of all Thanos's lieutenants. Naked from the waist up and with one hand still gripped by the anesthesized child. He had said he wouldn't leave Rak alone with the doctors. And he never did.


	8. Father 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rak only knows one word for someone to trust. He'll learn more, but for now everyone he cares about is "father."

Maw woke with a start. Waking anywhere but his quarters, or failing that the sleeping bunks on a ring ship, was a foreign concept to him and it took a moment for him to realize where he was. Just the same he was instantly fully awake and under other circumstances waking with others within touching range would provoke a violent response.

Not this time. Even asleep he had felt the little raccoon clutching his hand. He was sitting next to the blanket-filled box they'd treated Rak in and the first thing he did was look at the scarred little thing.  


"I saw that," said a faintly metallic voice from his left. He didn't need to look to know who it was. Nebula had arrived at some point while he slept and sat in the next seat at the infirmary.  
Maw said nothing, merely straightening as his face fell into its normal dignified lines. Nebula snorted, but had the grace to not point it out.

Instead she opened with a question. "How did it happen?"

Maw sighed. He still hadn't looked at her but he sensed her eyes on the box and its bandaged occupant. Rak was curled up around his hand, refusing even in sleep to relinquish his grip. He allowed himself to glance that way once more.

They'd had Rak under the knife for two hours to repair the damage he'd done, and for two more to deal with the worst cybernetics issued caused by the experimental nature of the raccoon's implants. There was a good reason he was the only living test subject in the lab where they found him. At first Rak had snarled at any attempt to anesthetize him for the work and only Maw's reassurances finally got him to comply. That and a promise he wouldn't leave his side. And so he sat in the clinic, still without anything on above the waist, all because...because of what?

"Quarters are being prepared, but they aren't ready. He was asleep so I just brought the toolbox he slept in to my quarters. It seemed simple enough, but when I woke he was on my bed. Perhaps he was cold, or not used to so much space. You know what we do when we wake and someone is unexpectedly close."

Nebula nodded. There was a time, before Father's tinkering removed so much of her organics, that she'd had lovers. More than one had suffered due to her reflexive waking violence. They were favored children of Thanos, but there were a price to be paid for that status.

"Only his augmentations allowed him to survive." Maw shook his head. "I meant to push him away, but he was so much smaller than I expected that I smashed him into the wall."

He steadied himself. How could he, who had seen and participated in so much death and violence, be so worried about one little creature? There was a ready answer.

"I believe he has potential," he said. "Father agrees. Naturally it would be wasteful to squander that potential."

"Naturally," she replied, and he could hear the sardonic smile in her voice.

The doctor who had been studying Rak's scans walked over. He checked the raccoon's vitals and then turned to Maw and Nebula. The knowledge he was talking to Black Order members who could kill him in front of his staff and never hear a word of reprimand rendered him understandably polite.

"He is out of danger," he opened. Maw forced himself not to react. "His cybernetic implants are...unconventional. They operate off his metabolism and are designed to grow as he does. The result of the latter, unfortunately, is pain. Until he reaches adulthood, which I suspect will be in one to two years, there will be inflammation, aches, pain, particularly in the mornings. We are preparing a pharmaceutical regimen he will need to take every day. There is simply nothing else we can do, sir. It is too late to start over. We can watch for abnormalities, but that is all."

"Also, for your information," he went on, "the fact that his augmentations operate off his blood sugar and grow using minerals from his body means he will always need more food than a normal creature his size. Especially until he finishes growing. If I may be so bold," he nodded to Nebula, "It is the opposite of your situation."

Nebula nodded. There was so little of her original body left that her cybernetics practically powered it. She only ate small amounts, or for special occasions. It was the other way around for Rak.  


"One last thing," the doctor said. "I've never seen a brain so heavily augmented with implants. The idea is that organic and artificial will fuse into one mind, and so far it seems to be working, but..." he shrugged. "He is a small creature to make sapient. Problems may arise."

The doctor busied himself elsewhere, no doubt happy to be away from the lethal cyborg and the Black Order commander who could kill men with his mind. Maw was still looking at Rak, curled around his hand amongst the blankets. His shaved skin was warm against Maw's hand and he had to repress a smile.

Nebula noticed. This time she said something.

"There is a provision for this," Nebula said. "We are each allowed to select a trainee to mentor. I've never done it, nor my sister, but Midnight and Glaive both have. Cull has had three that I know of. None have excelled enough to join the Order, but the survivors still serve Father."

Maw sat up straight in his chair. "Are you suggesting," he said in something closer to his usual haughty tone, "that I adopt him? He is a Child of Thanos. He has value to Father. That is all."

"Is it?" Nebula looked past him at the little raccoon, clutching Maw's hand even in sleep. "Is that why you rushed here in such a hurry you didn't even stop to finish dressing?"

"To let him die in such a way would be to fail Father," Maw said firmly. "It is no more than that."

Nebula nodded thoughtfully. "When I was with him in the lounge, without tools he repaired battle damage to my cybernetics. Even if he never develops other skills, he would be useful to have as a follower."

"He is already more than that." Maw, who had seen the Titan test Rak, explained the tactical problem Rak had solved. "And studying the files from the lab suggests he may prove equally adept at piloting and gunplay. Of course he will never be as large as we are, but he was never meant to be a front-line soldier. He was used as a technology testbed. They succeeded, I think, beyond their wildest dreams."

"And then you almost brained him against a wall," Nebula said. She conveniently failed to mention that she too had hurt Rak, though not as badly. "I see a use for him, as a mechanic if nothing else. I can easily have a small set of quarters installed next to mine. I am sure Father will -"

"Know your place," Ebony Maw said with the first trace of anger. "I will make my own decision. Quarters are already nearly done for him. I will see to his training. I found him in the lab. He is my responsibility."

Nebula tilted her head to the side. She didn't bother to hide her smile. "You have priority, sir. I can't mentor him if you've already decided to."

She'd neatly mousetrapped him. Still, what difference did it make? Rak was a Child of Thanos now. They were family. It didn't matter who gave him direction. It didn't matter at all.

"It is efficient," he said. It was as though someone else spoke through his mouth. The words came out and he couldn't stop them. After a moment he didn't try. "It is efficient to leave him in the situation he already knows. Less disruptive."

Rak stirred sleepily in the box, and the discussion ended. It was finished, in any event. The decision was made before Nebula ever walked into the room.

It proved possible to convince Rak to another hand in place of Maw's, provided that hand was familiar. Nebula's cool cybernetic hand, for example. Maw had time to dress, finally, check in with the crew building quarters for Rak, and report briefly to Father. It was an awkward situation, but Thanos understood. 

It was no different than when he adopted his favored daughter, Gamora, or the other promising survivors of culls who eventually joined the Black Order. Thanos could not be everywhere, teach everyone. When he could not be, members of the Black Order could themselves have followers. It was for this reason that the mentor system existed. Rak was simply the newest member of the family.

Rak was asleep for more than a day as the medics tended to him. There were many hurts to mend. Some they could barely address, like the ongoing pain of his implants or the possibility of Uplift failure if his augmented brain failed to integrate its inorganic parts.

Other wounds were easier to treat. Incipient infections were squelched and the inexcusably sloppy work on his back around the spinal implants was tended to. When his fur grew back it would grow there, too, leaving just exposed metal studs like the ones at his collarbones.

But growing fur would take time. When he woke, thirty-six hours later, he found himself in a little nook of a room built to his scale. He recognized the design, the bed with the drawers under it, the washing stall, the relief station. He was alone, but the room was full of a familiar scent. It gave him almost as much comfort as contact with that scent's owner. The fresh smell told him Chief Tall One had been here recently, and that the bedclothes had been handled by him or perhaps were from his own bed.

He played with the controls for the bedside lamp, read the note next to smart pill dispenser. 'Take all pills in compartment when open, to prevent pain.' There were pills in the open slot and he took them. The pain remained. He would learn the medication took time to take effect.

After using the relief station and washing the stink of infirmary off he briefly explored his new space. A much larger room adjoined the nook and here he found his tool fit, its many parts neatly back in their slots, and a long workbench with even more tools. Projection stations showed he'd be able to call up as many hovering screens as he needed.

Folded on the workbench were bundles of black and gray cloth which turned out to be knee-length pants and a vest of armor-tough mesh lined with a soft fabric that was warm against his shaven skin. He'd never had clothing before but protection against the cool air was welcome and Rak approved of the attached harness with loops to hold tools of his choice. He spent a moment selecting tools for it, but much less time than he would otherwise, for he was hungry.

A succulent odor led him not to the door but to a vent, where he found the mesh cover already loosened. The smells of Chief Tall One and of food led him just a few feet through the vents. His quarters were directly connected to someone else's. to When he pushed another loosened grill aside he found himself looking into a room he already knew.

"Ah, little one," Ebony Maw said. He looked up from the table next to the bookshelf as Rak climbed down it. "Breakfast." A bewildering variety of foodstuff covered the table and Rak wasted no time in jumping up on a chair and stuffing everything he could reach into his mouth. He especially liked the round green fruit, each of which was just the right size to pop between his fangs. He didn't know the names for any of it. Just that it was good.

"In a few days," the towering Maw said from the other side of the table, "when you are better, I will introduce you on the training deck. You already know a great deal. There you will learn to put it to use. You will have many new tools and things to do, and you will learn about our sire's great quest as well. There are classes there for little ones like yourself. You can make new friends."  


_Friends._ Rak knew what the word meant, intellectually. He just didn't know how to apply the word to real life. He thought about that. He'd only met a few people here, and they'd all treated him well, after a short time in some cases and right away in the case of Maw and Thanos. They must be friends. Therefore having friends is good.

In the lab he'd been a project. A _thing._ All he had was fear and hate and pain. Here he was a _person._ he had food and comfort and tools. He liked being a person, even a little one.  


Maw paused, his fork halfway to his mouth. Rak realized he was waiting for an answer. He must have said something while Rak was eating. "Well, little one? Does that sound good?"

He remembered now. Chief Tall One had asked if he liked the idea of going to school. Rak thought about how to respond. Of course he liked the idea. But what to say? He didn't know anyone's name. He barely knew his own. But he did know one word for someone worthy of respect. So he responded just as he had when Thanos asked him a question, two days ago.

"Yes," the little raccoon said between bites. He looked wide-eyed up at Ebony Maw, and smiled. "Yes, father."

Maw smiled, and passed him a roll. Rak's tiny outfit was quite deliberately a smaller version of his own. He'd never had a son before, after all. May as well dress him for the part.


	9. First day at school

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No matter how talented, a child must eventually go to school, with all that entails.

It was a little thing, no taller than a man's knee, but the class knew this creature was to be respected. The clothing it wore under its tool harness was a smaller, simpler version of Ebony Maw's, and that told them that this was the protege of the leader of the Black Order.

If it weren't for that, they would pay little attention. A whiskery muzzle poked out from a red felt hood and bright eyes shone from the darkness farther in, but so many species served Thanos that details like little clawed hands and animalistic features were inconsequential.

It peered nervously around the room and Proctor Farnax turned from the hovering screens. The Rigellian's bulky head was far larger than the new student's entire body. Farnax gripped the control wand for the screens in both hands, something the class knew meant he was about to speak formally. The whisper of conversation and clatter of assorted digits on keys ceased.

"Class, this is our new student, Rak," the proctor said. "He will join our class rotation starting today. Rak, you were provided with a daily schedule, correct?"

The little creature nodded wordlessly and the proctor went on. "Rak, this class has few rules. I will lay them out for you now. First, when I am speaking, it is because I have a reason to speak. This goes for the other instructors as well. Second, since some of our students are small or fragile," _including you,_ he didn't say, "The class will stay together when we move between classrooms. And third, do not touch anyone without their permission, or at least without them seeing you do it. Some of our students are combat focused and may react violently."

Rak nodded, rubbing his left shoulder, and something about his demeanor said that he'd already learned that lesson. He peered around once more, taking in the room, the hovering screens, the big-headed instructor, and the students.

There were a dozen, including a bulky half-mechanical monstrosity. Said monstrosity stared back, head swiveled unnaturally far around so it looked over its own shoulder. With a visible effort Rak tore his eyes away from the exposed cybernetics and eyed the rest of the class.

There were a few humanoids of various colors, some with odd forehead ridges and some who would have blended in just fine at the Terran-staffed lab that made him. Rak sniffed, taking in the confusion of scents. No, not Terrans. There was a furry creature with long white claws that reminded him of the M-type Subject at the lab. The M-type had been the last one killed, leaving him the only Subject currently being worked on. The researchers had talked about needing more animals, but it hadn't happened before Father took him away to here.

The nearest student was a strange creature little bigger than himself, with leathery black skin, six limbs and an eyeless head that was little more than a great mouth full of fangs. Rak had seen larger versions of it in the corridors of Sanctuary II, but then he'd been safely up on Father's shoulder. It turned to look at him then scooted to the side on the sitting pad, making room. Rak hesitated.  
"It's all right, Rak," Proctor Farnax said. "You're safe here. Take a few minutes to meet everyone."

Tentatively Rak eased forward, not sure whether to trust the toothy thing or not, but when it squeezed as far out of the way as possible he finally decided it wasn't going to bite him and sat down on the bench next to it. Everyone was on pads of various sizes. Looking around at the range of body forms, from humanoid to less so than himself made him nod as he sat.

"What is it," the thing sitting next to him, all teeth and claws, was watching. "What did you see?"

Rak looked at the thing in return. It didn't seem to have any eyes, but it was looking at him. Its voice was surprisingly soft. It seemed friendly.

"Sitting." He tapped the pad. "Different shapes, all can sit." He struggled to put the words together. He knew what he wanted to say, but not the words to say it right. Luckily the toothy alien figured it out.  


"You mean everyone can sit on something like this, no matter what shape they are." Rak nodded.

Rak looked around at the circle of students. The monstrosity with one whole side made of cybernetics saw him staring. One real and one cyborg eye saw his hands twitch.

"You want to work on me," it grated. It didn't sound angry, or surprised.

"Fix," Rak said eagerly. "Is not right." He checked the tools on his belt, making sure they were in order. Twice. He couldn't help it.

"It is all right," the cyborg said. "Everyone wants to work on me. I am everyone's project."

"Project," Rak said. "Like me."

The toothy alien put one clawed hand on his arm. Somehow it sensed the downturn in his mood even though the hood concealed his face. Maybe it saw the hood shift as his ears sank.  
"It's all right, Rak," it said. "Veen lets us work on him. When our Sire rescued him, he was much worse off than he is now. He's our class project, but only because he wants it."

Rak checked his took belt, unsure of what to say. Silent, he looked at the other students. Many of them were young, though none as small as himself. Most had scars, cybernetic implants, or, like the toothy one, were strangely different than the rest of their kind.

They looked back, seeing a little raccoon hiding under his hood. Hiding the shaved hide, the bolts, the surgical scars that turned him into what he was today. Not what he was meant to be, but what someone wanted him to be. He'd been called a freak, a project enough in the lab, and seen enough on Sanctuary II to know that he was still the weird one. Except here, maybe.

The toothy alien knew. It gripped his arm with that clawed hand. "You're the only one? No one else like you?" He nodded.

"No one like Rak," he said. No race of tiny raccoon people. No others at all. Just him.

It breathed through the fangs. "My people, the Outriders, we're supposed to be big, strong, fast. Stupid. Just soldiers, so that's what we do for our Sire. But I am different. I'm little and smart." It managed a four-armed shrug. "The others would have eaten me if Sire hadn't somehow heard about me and sent me here. There's no one else like me either, Rak. I'm Elle. It's nice to meet you."

The class started, and the other students nodded as the proctor went over material they already knew, to fill in the blanks for Rak. He learned out Sire (he now had two words for people he respected, Father and Sire) tried to save his world from extinction and was cast out. Thanos learned from that, from the death of his world.

Now Sire went from world to world with his followers, and helped them avoid that fate. Fewer people meant more for everyone. Rak nodded. It made sense. People had to die for that to happen, but he'd met a lot of bad people in his short life. If it weren't for Father and the others, he'd still be in a cage, still being operated on. The idea of people like his makers dying to make more room for others didn't bother him.

He attended two more first-day orientation classes. In one of them he was the only student. He learned that the training decks on Sanctuary II covered many subjects. One whole deck was combat training. He'd miss most of that. But he'd attend the ones that involved working on weapons and then using them. His little clawed hands twitched at the thought. Maybe it was because they'd programmed him that way, to need to work and shoot? He shrugged. It didn't matter why he liked doing it. 

Piloting, too, would be taught. He looked forward to that, too. And some other subjects he didn't care about.Medicine . Accounting. He supposed they were trying to find out what he was good at.  


After lunch, the promised mechanics class taught by Proctor Dak, who himself was half cybernetics. ("Exceptional performance in class will be rewarded by being allowed to work on me." Rak liked the sound of that.) Some of his home room students were there, some he hadn't met yet, but all of a technical bent.

There were a couple of the humanoid students who gave him a wide berth. They looked at him funny, and he didn't know why. Because he was little and strange, or because they were afraid of Father? Most people were. Perched on Chief Tall One's shoulder he'd seen people back away, out in the corridors. Was he scary by association?

Half an hour into the class and he forgot all that. He and Elle were working on one side of Veen, two different students on the other side. The way the cybernetics were bolted into Veen's tough flesh was crude, but fascinating. He wasn't the first student to work on the alien and some of the work was good. Some less so. He already saw ways to make it work better. And he saw the reddened areas where tough gray flesh tried to reject the metal.

Pain. He knew pain, knew what it was like to hurt when he woke up, less so throughout the day. . Veen had to be in pain, too. Maybe he if got good enough, he could make it hurt less, or not at all. For him, for Veen, maybe for Tall Blue One and others. Suddenly the medical classes sounded more interesting.

Veen was watching as he worked on a shoulder carefully taken apart, its components neatly laid out for reassembly. Proctor Dak, making a circuit of the room to watch students work, nodded approvingly. The tiny new student was doing well.

Dak was a teacher. He was concerned with his student's technical expertise and talents Machines were his calling. He was as ignorant of social interactions as Rak. That's why neither noticed the important thing that had already happened.

Rak showed up to home room with a red felt sweater under his armored garb, a sweater that covered him from wrists up over his ears. Fifteen minutes into the mechanics class the little raccoon rolled up his sleeves and pulled down the hood. He was so engrossed in the technical work, and so comfortable working with those of like mind, that he forgot why he'd covered up in the first place.

He was too busy to worry about the scars, the bolts, the shaven hide. He didn't pay them the least attention. And in this room full of misfits and aliens, neither did anyone else.


End file.
